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From my very limited hunt testing training experience one of the biggest things I learned was in order to keep a dogs attitude up you absolutely need lots birds. As many as You can manage to get your hands on. Especially when running blinds.

We hardly ever use birds for blinds in training, mainly because if you have 3 blinds out and your running 8 dogs on the set up it's much easier to put out enough bumpers for all the dogs than to have 24 birds for the blinds. Marks are different, hardly ever use bumpers or ATB's unless it's for water marks where were teaching and will be repeating.

Birds...birds...more birds. Nothing is a stronger reward to a Dog than real feathers. A sticky piece of plastic is just no substitute. As Ed said....in the life of spending for a FC.....your bird bill is the cheapist part.

I absolutely AGREE with those who have stated you MUST use birds. Otherwise why do this sport if because of time, circumstance or $ if you cannot provide your animal w/birds? My other suggestion is if you do have some limitations(we all do) at the very LEAST have a bird pen in your yard or where you can take the dog regularly so you can push their birdiness 24/7. I have an industrial strength welded chain link elevated aviary off my bird house. This allows the dogs to go under , around , pound the aviary to get @ the birds and gives them entertainment as well. My dogs do not go wild when given birds but know what they have to do w/them. The pro trained vs amateur trained dogs usually do better w/birds (not hyper , etc) because they have shot birds/blind birds..etc. I have the other stuff as well but there is , I think , NO substitute for birds. They are after all , bird dogs. Good luck.

Thanks everyone for the advice living in rural surrounding I can do the pheasant thing ducks are so much more of a chore and dirty, and Raymond I shelled out 12 to 15 thousand out last year with a trainer so I'm already cutting corners apparently, Neil

Quit now or don't start because keeping expenses down will never happen with HT or FT training.

Amen to that! I can't really remember the last time I threw a mark with anything but a real bird.

Every time I read about someone's dog messing with the birds at a hunt test, I think about this. The reason being? When I first started I used dokkens. At my first hunt test my dog did great on land. Then on the very last bird on water, my dog had to come through heavy cattails on his way back. I saw him go into them, but he didn't come out. I walked around with the judge to check on him, and there he was where he knew no one could see him, tossing the bird up in the air and then pouncing on it. We wan't eating it, but he sure was having a good time with it! I got the dog back to deliver, and the judges had a LONG discussion before they decided that they wouldn't be doing me any favors by passing us... Now that we use nothing but birds, the dogs think nothing of seeing them at a trial, just another day at the office!

Last edited by Buzz; 02-21-2014 at 04:26 PM.

"For everyone to whom much is given, of him shall much be required." -- Luke 12:48